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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Joe,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Thanks for the thoughts. Here’s what comes immediately to
mind:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>You Wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>In light of the diversity of religious and non-religious beliefs,
Plantinga<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>is forced to suggest something like what Michael suggests, e.g., that
we (or<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>some of us) are built with "a highly damaged belief producing
mechanism: one<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>that sometimes hardly works at all, or at other times even when it does<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>work, it is so weak and faulty that self-deceptive mechanisms."
Some people<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>just get it wrong. I don't find this to be a very satisfying response.
To me<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>it is not so much a response to skepticism as it is a defense of
dogmatism.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Me:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Yes, I think it is probably more a defense of dogmatism than it is a
response to skepticism. And it may be true from a broad perspective that
Plantinga is forced to say some of these things because of the pluralism that
surrounds him. I’m not sure. However, I don’t think this is
actually how his proposal of ‘proper function’ works in terms of
his conceptual analysis of ‘knowledge.’ As you know, Plantinga is
just playing the same analytic game with propositional knowledge, and he argues
that ‘proper function’ provides a better analysis of what makes our
beliefs warranted than does the more classical formulation of internal
evidential justification. But this would seem to mean that the context of his
work is not primarily the task of ‘answering the skeptic.’
Perhaps Plantinga would simply say, “why do a thing like that?”. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>This also means that all our knowledge, and not just our religious
knowledge, provides evidence for a ‘proper function’
analysis. I know that you have a mind like me because my cognitive
faculties are producing and sustaining beliefs the way they ought, not because
I have sufficiently certain propositional evidence on which to base my belief
that you have a mind like me. But if I start believing that my computer
has Dr. Campbell’s mind, and this is due to a malfunctioning of my belief
forming mechanisms, then this belief is not ‘knowledge’ even if it
does happen to end up true (e.g. unknown to me, you have taken control of my
operating system and have began expressing your personality in various
multi-media ways). Plantinga goes on and applies this to belief in God,
but belief in God is not his originating datum. Further, the analysis of proper
function provides yet another argument for the existence of God, since
naturalistic accounts cannot seem to get us (according to Plantinga) the
intuitive idea of ‘proper function’ to begin with, which is why
Plantinga’s definition of knowledge needs to include ‘according to the
design plan’ in its necessary and sufficient conditions. Also, as
I’ve already hinted at, this idea of ‘cognitive malfunction’
appears to be one way of expressing traditional Abrahamic theism, with a cosmic
fall as found in Gen. 3. So it would seem that Plantinga is just cutting
with the grain in a couple ways; he doesn’t seem to be forced into
anything because of his ‘fundamentalism,’ a word Plantinga enjoys
making fun of in Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>And Plantinga is not peripheral in a discussion like this given the
universal appreciation for him. I knew an analytic philosopher not long
ago who was offered a teaching position at Harvard; he rejected the offer, but
chose Plantinga’s epistemology for Senior Seminar that year since he
thought Plantinga was the most brilliant philosopher alive. Interestingly this
same philosopher is a well known proponent of atheism.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>I like your minimalist analysis of communal belief sharing (if
that’s an ok way to put it). I’d like to delve into that too, but I
don’t have the time right now.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Enjoying the discussion<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Michael Metzler<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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